Things Unseen
by rebuild-your-ruins
Summary: Ponyboy Curtis. That was his name. The name of the boy who was being destroyed by his own psyche. The name of the boy who felt alone. The name of the boy who'd lost just as much as Heaven's gained. Story is, in fact, better than this summary. Insane!Pony
1. Chapter 1

Things Unseen

A pair of shimmering grey eyes opened in the dark of night, sudden and alert. They darted around, searching for someone who was not there. These eyes gleamed in the bright darkness, shining grey with a hidden hue of green, panic swimming in the combined colours. Tears streaked down the face of the boy, which was paling from the immediate explosion of both panic and fear. And such an immense fear it was. A fear of what he could not even recall, a fear of what his mind had left behind in the panicky moment of being pulled from a terror it alone had created in spite of itself. A fear concocted by nightmares.

The fear created solely from a nightmare is what one may believe the most sever of all fear. The fear of something unreal, something you cease to see once awake, something which cannot touch you, but will hurt you in every way imaginable. Something which will never leave you alone. The torment never ends when you can't do anything to stop it. And there is simply nothing you can do about a nightmare. You cannot tell it to leave, you cannot simply ignore it, you cannot defeat it. You cannot unsee what you've experienced in the darkest of nightmares. And you will never be able to run from it. Hiding is impossible. As soon as you've found the appropriate hiding place, a niche or a cave or anything really, as soon as you nod off, no matter how safe you are physically, it will once again have you in its grasp.

A scream, twisted and broken, echoed through the dark house, which had just previously been swallowed up by the night. It seems never ending as it continues to stumble from the boy's mouth.

Ponyboy Curtis. That was his name.

The name of the boy being destroyed by his psyche.

The name of the boy who felt alone.

The name of the boy who's lost as much as heaven's gained.

In a different room in the same house, the straining blue eyes of Darrel Curtis peel open immediately and before he has the time to blink his eyes awake, his feet kick over the side of the bed and he's running to his little brother's room. All of these actions he performs subconsciously and without hesitation, aware of the situation and its evident importance.

He burst into the bedroom still engulfed in darkness and reached the bed at an incredible speed, wrapping his arms around Ponyboy and beginning to rock him. His voice dances in the silence as he soothed whispers into his little brother's ear, stroking his hair at the same time. He tried his hardest to calm the boy, and as close to hysterics as Ponyboy was, this proved to be no easy task.

The boy was racked by sobs, his body stood no chance at overpowering it, and he held onto Darry's shirt with his life. Darry rested his head on the fifteen-year-Old's and rubbed his back as he cried. Gross half sobs echoed from his lips as Ponyboy accepted the sympathy. Whimpers and sniffles bombarded each other as they rushed from Pony's mouth.

These terrors, which had petrified Ponyboy Curtis for nearly two years now, were evidently the ultimate torture. It seemed as though there was no possible cure, and even the most immediate of comfort failed to settle his breaking, depressed mind. Nothing would be strong enough to glue the pieces of a broken mind back together again. His mind had lost its layer of protection and was giving in to the torture and stress created by a mind he believed belonged to him. Soon, his mind would fall apart, would come crashing to the feet of these extreme nightmares. These extreme nightmares which had proved that terrors are incredibly capable to appear sudden and out of nowhere. Which is just what they did, they appeared suddenly, though they were strangely expected to show eventually. And they did anything but subside; if anything, they grew strong quickly, as if feeding off the fear. These nightmares were triggered, originally, by the deaths of Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston. They seemed to ease a few months afterward, seemed only temporary. They were believed to vanish. Until a _third_ experience snaked its way into the lives of the family called Curtis. This situation seemed to dig the deepest of forgotten sorrow up from the depths of their minds.

Sadness was reborn, worry was conceived, and nightmares bloomed when a young Sodapop Curtis was hauled off the war.

_A/N:_

_Thanks for reading! Please review. I will only continue this story if I get some reviews, so please._

_Tell me if I should continue this or not, because I'm not too sure about it. Thanks!_

_Stay gold and stay tuff,_

_-A-T-S-G-_


	2. Chapter 2

Things Unseen Chapter 2

Lysergic acid diethylamide, more commonly known as acid or LSD, was out as a final resort to some hundreds of people during the sixties. It created a release from reality, and gave you a look into a futuristic setting, with realistic colours and shapes and thoughts you don't notice aren't yours. Some people, though desperate they were, believed this to be an escape from everyday pains such as depression. Now, this was simply a belief cooked up over time to help them ease themselves, and help them believe that there was a way out of _everything_. However, there is not. And relying on drugs as wild and eccentric as acid for your depression really isn't the best one could do.

But the pills and blotters sought out by the dependent soul did give them a release in some way. It did ease the pain, if only for a while. All your troubles would disappear, only to be replaced with more drastic and un-repairable problems, though they always depending on the type of 'trip' you were having. Bad trips resulted in simply more trouble, mixed in with more than enough fear as well as pain. After a bad trip you'd be left in a corner, your shoulders shaking, your eyes open immensely wide and look as if they're about to pop clear out of your head. You're trying your best to fight the urge to jump out the window across the room from you. You're well aware of the three stories you stand on top of. A window that high up can be incredibly tempting without the drugs, and _with_ them, well. Let's just say the temptation is most usually cured.

A good trip will go far different, and you will end up experiencing the most vibrant, illusive colour schemes your mind could ever think up. You take part on a wild and mind-blowing journey, never knowing just what will be around the corners of your mind. Never knowing just what you'll end up seeing. What you'll end up remembering the next day when you wake up from your high inspired dreams.

And though these drugs can inspire the depression their bodies had just previously given in to, people still took them. Still indulged mindlessly in them, simply for a release to something more. And just as you've been expecting, Ponyboy Curtis was one of these incompetently desperate people.

The loss of live inventory had been evident in the mind of Ponyboy, and he simply had to find something he could appreciate. Something he was positive would never end up being taken away from him. Ripped from his grasp. Which was exactly how everything else had turned out. Everyone he held dear had been selfishly ripped away from him, hidden in a jar and placed on a high, high shelf, far from his imagined reach. Unable to return these stolen souls to their original place, he turned, defeated, to the dependence of drugs. Drugs such as acid.

How Darry had taken so long to figure out where exactly his brother had been disappearing to is rather mind-boggling, and never once have I fully gotten my mind around it. Pony would disappear, dead to the world, briefly nearly every day; if not that frequently about every three days. He would leave, and, alone, he would place a single blotter on his tongue, and allow his mind to roam, free and never-ending. In some way, these drugs were like seeds, planted into the mind of the desperate freelancer, and would soon sprout colourful vines, which would bloom into beautiful flowering ideas and visions. However, these were only short-lived, for the lives of said visions and ideas would crumble and fall apart not long after they had reached their mature eccentricity.

But the excitement concocted by these raw exposures of understood insanity would be all that was left by the time he was finished. He'd be left under the trees in the lot, left in looming shadows. He'd recall what he'd seen and what he supposed had happened, and he would get himself together, and get ready for what real life had to offer him. Pony was always disappointed by what it had to offer. Because all life ever had to offer him was pain. Mental pain; not physical. And in the end, the most excruciating of pains are the ones in your head, the ones that won't go away with the help of conversation, and the ones that are only partially covered by the swallow of a pill. Temporarily solved with the help of a blotter, pill, or coated sugar cube, depression and mental pain is the worst of all to conquer. It can lead to more pain, to addictions. To death.

Get yourself together now, oh faithful reader, for the topic of death is not something this chapter will be discussing. It's the later chapters of this ominous story your mind will need to cower from.

_A/N:_

_Thanks so much for reading! And I would like to say thanks to all the people who reviewed the first chapter, THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU ALL. The warning at the end of this chapter was not meant to completely terrify you, but you can be worried if you like. Please be kind enough to review, for it's the reviews that keep this story alive and flowing. :)_

_Stay gold and stay tuff,_

_-Attempting-To-Stay-Gold-_


	3. Chapter 3

Things Unseen Chapter 3

A bloodcurdling scream cuts through the silence developed so carefully by the night. The voice breaks only halfway through the sudden shriek, and it morphs into unwanted, cracked sobs. If one would just stop to listen, they would hear the tears streaming, never-ending, down the face of the boy, for they were streaming with such ferocious velocity the sound was rather difficult to miss. But being humans, no-one would take the time to listen to a noise they believed was not there, and therefore no-one would hear it. The only reason no-one hears the tears of a broken soul fall is because they simply do not try to listen. Tell me, reader, have you ever thought to take the time to listen for a tear to drop? Of course not. They give off a certainly loud and ominous feeling, radiating from the puffy and reddening eyes of the one who cries, alone and without realistic cause.

Darry is in the room at once and is cradling the body of his little brother close in his arms. They are laced with such an intense layer of muscle it's hard to believe these arms are capable of being so gentle. He strokes the dark hair of the boy and plants soothing kisses in his hair.

''Shhh… Pony. Pony it's alright. It was just a dream. It's okay. I'm here now, see, it's okay.'' The deep voice of a protecting older brother breaks the screaming silence. He places Ponyboy's head in the crook of his neck and rocks them both back and forth in the most calming way possible.

''N-no… It w-wasn't just a d-dream….'' The boy cries out between racked sobs, ''I w-woke up and i-it was _r-real._'' The heart of his brother cracks at the soft cry of a voice and he bows his head, half burying it in Ponyboy's hair.

''Sodapop'll be back in just a couple months, Pony, it'll all be okay then. He'll come back.''

''But what if he d-doesn't?'' The boy is panicking now. He's unsure of his brother's claims, and the thoughts developing in his head are ones which are entirely unwelcome. Thoughts of a torn body, left alone in the middle of a dark war, one which seems swallowed up in the night when it's just the middle of day. If Soda was to die in war, Pony's one wish was that he wouldn't be alone. Soda always hated being alone. It just bugged him, not having anyone to converse with.

''He will.'' The voice of his older brother is breaking, and he too is quite unsure of his claims. He holds onto his beliefs of the future, but doesn't everyone? Doesn't everyone want to believe that their future will be perfect and even if the present isn't too charming, everything will work out in the end? But just think of how many of these premonitions become reality. Exactly.

''He has to.'' Darry adds. Ponyboy buries his face into the older man's shirt and sobs.

/

Go down about three blocks from the Curtis household, and you have another story blossoming from traumatic events and vining into the future. The house of a Mr. Steve Randle has never been too welcoming, what with a crazed father who was constantly throwing him out and telling him never to come back, but one will eventually get used to his surroundings.

Steve was possibly even worse off than Ponyboy.

The heart of one who has had their best friend ripped away from them and placed into a death scene is not one which will mend easily. Days and nights belonging to the eighteen-year-old were spent alone, huddled in the corner of the darkest of rooms, his head bowed and resting on his bony knees. He was lost in a maze of confusion and unable to find his way out. What he needed was a lantern, a bright soul willing enough to collect his fear and worry and throw it mercilessly out a window. But there was no-one.

His father had taken it drastically easier on him lately, no longer threatening to throw him out; Arguments became rare. Not that Steve ever had the power to yell back when they did take place in the home. He just sat through them, his eyes sunken, his mouth sown into an unchangeable frown. The pain of depression cast constantly dark shadows down the boy's painfully young features.

Did he blame himself for the loss of his best friend? Without meaning to, of course he did. How it could have ever been _anyone's_ fault, I lack even the slightest of notions, but apparently it was quite clear to him that it was his fault entirely. Someone had to be to blame for this, and the closest bystander was himself. Therefore the only thing he acquired was a heavy load of guilt.

I believe the one thing this gang lacked to remember was that Sodapop Curtis was not dead. No, in fact he was still up and running in the worst possible surroundings. War was the most negatively based, hell-like surrounding the boy had ever witnessed, not that he had witnessed too many hell-based atmospheres. He was scared. He was depressed.

But he was alive.

This was possibly the most important fragment of knowledge, though no-one was able enough to grasp it.

_A/N:_

_Thanks for reading! PLEASE REVIEW. Thank you, all you kind, kind, people who were gracious enough to review so far. I hope you liked the chapter._

_Stay gold and stay tuff,_

_-A-T-S-G-_


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